Press Coverage

2018

The article is in German, but here is a nice translated snippet!
"For us as a tourist, the city looks a bit abandoned, but not exceptionally different at first sight. Hostel Detroit invited us to make our own opinion of Detroit and we were more than interested. Especially cities like Detroit, whose image does not necessarily look like a tourist magnet, irritate us a lot.........
.....The Hostel Detroit is the only hostel in the city and was created from a couch surfing idea. With not enough space for backpackers from all over the world, the hostel was built with the help of volunteers. Since then, it has been working non-profit, thriving on a growing community whose mood is changing, and saving the city is contagious."

2017

"A 501(c)(3) educational non-profit, Hostel Detroit is an inexpensive and immersive homebase for your short getaway. A quick walk from the restaurants, bars, and shops in Downtown and the Corktown Business District, the property boasts a large backyard, three kitchens, free wifi throughout and computer access in one of the many common areas, a communal back deck, fire pit, and cheap onsite parking. The lodge’s volunteer Ambassadors hold weekly tours and individualized extended discussion for curious visitors."

"The atmosphere is relaxed, the organization impeccable, prices are ultra affordable, the playlist masterful...... The most in Corktown is its local community: associations, urban gardens, cultural projects like Assemble Sound and its church converted into a concert and studio venue, artists and young entrepreneurs with Ponyride , a co-working space to visit to discover the new and creative blood of the city ... These places make this " neighborhood, The oldest in Detroit, a very lively place at the forefront of solidarity economy."

"To listen to the best playlist in the city and glean tips for Hip-Hop outings, it is imperative that you stay at the Hostel Detroit located in the Corktown area on Vermont Street. Hostel Detroit was founded by a group of friends who have long been involved in community projects. By dint of resourcefulness, recovery, and craftsmanship, they have admirably renovated and furnished a large house. In just a few years, they have become the coolest (and most affordable) place to stay in Detroit, in a very culturally active neighborhood. They are also connoisseurs of the local music scene and very big fans of Hip-hop.

"With a focus on helping visitors explore Detroit, Corktown-based Hostel Detroit is an educational nonprofit. Hosting its first guests six years ago, the space offers three stocked kitchens, four bathrooms, a library, multiple common areas, parking, a backyard, and both dorm-style and private rooms. Maps, advice for self-guided exploration plans, and tours by local ambassadors are also available."

"To an outsider, Detroit can feel overwhelming with its massive sprawl and the intimidation that comes with traversing a city filled with empty roads and vacant buildings. Yet there is a lot happening here — you just need to know where to find it. “That’s what makes it fun for us, I can break a misconception, and I can change a view point, and I don’t even really have to do anything except just show people or tell them about it,” says Fairchild. “Then they come back and they’re like, ‘holy crap I would never have expected that to be here!’”

2016

"There is only 1 hostel in the city, the five-year-old, nonprofit Hostel Detroit. About 70% of its guests are international travelers. “They are definitely people who come here intentionally, who are excited about the city. A lot of people come for the techno scene and urban planning interests. I constantly have people say Detroit is the best experience they have ever had.” says Zach Fairchild, co-director."

"Something remarkable is happening here. The city is exploding with art and food and activity. Creative types are coming from all over to be part of the transformation........... Culturally cool Corktown is fully hipster and home to the Detroit Institute of Bagels, Batch Brewing (the city’s first nano brewery), music destinations, such as the UFO Factory and Hostel Detroit, with its free walking tours."

2015

"But upon exploration, signs of the recent Detroit revival emerge — artists snapping up foreclosed homes, a thriving culinary scene, major housing developments, the oft-praised RiverWalk with views across to Windsor, Ontario (to the south, just to throw the brain an added twist). And more than anything, energetic mini-neighborhoods vibrant with commercial, creative and civic activity. It’s not just the houses that are inexpensive but, with some exceptions, the city as a whole......... Arriving via rental car (your choices are rental car or rental bike, since the bus system isn’t quite up to the task) straight off a cheap Spirit Airlines flight, I set myself up at Hostel Detroit — a funky place in a semi-abandoned, semi-cool grassy-urban part of the Corktown neighborhood, where a private room with shared common space and bathroom was $58 a night — and then headed down to Michigan Avenue, looking for a bar to watch the Lions game."

"Hostel Detroit illustrates one of the many ways that citizen-led advocates have initiated a creative re-purposing of the city of Detroit, MI. Located in North Corktown, one of six neighborhoods officially recognized to be within the Greater Downtown Districts of Detroit, Hostel Detroit opened its doors to the public in April of 2011. Hostel Detroit is an innovative 501(c)(3) educational non-profit hostel that provides affordable accommodations for tourists while educating guests about the unique sights and sounds of the city.
At the heart of the organization is the Hostel Detroit Ambassador program. The program links visitors with an army of over 100 passionate volunteers that provide tours and gives the kind of insiders advice on the hidden gems and best places to visit in Detroit, that only a local perspective can provide. Upon arriving at Hostel Detroit, guests attend an orientation session with Ambassadors that is tailored to a list of interests dictated by the guest when a reservation is initially secured."

"To start, visitors can stay at Hostel Detroit. The colorful hostel allows guests access to a full kitchen and quaint seating areas filled with books and old movies to watch. It's inexpensive and community-oriented."

2014

Hostel Detroit is the consummate urban hostel in the European mold. Opened by Emily Doerr in 2011, the hostel is in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. Visitors can get a crash course in the city — different from the same ruin porn spots that show up in every magazine trend story — upon arrival. Education, Doerr says, is their primary mission.

2013

"One of its first guests, Deveri Gifford, is an example of what they would like to see more of. Gifford and her husband stayed at the hostel about a week after it opened. Today, they are the owners of the popular Brooklyn Street Local eatery in Corktown.
They opened it after deciding to permanently move from Toronto to Detroit. “That actually led us to the building that is now the restaurant,” Gifford said of her and her husband’s stay at the hostel, adding that they were able to network and make connections in the city almost immediately."

"In the middle of 2011, the Hostel Detroit has opened, a youth hostel with nine rooms and a psychedelically painted façade. This artifical establishment is located in the north-west, about one kilometer from Wayne State University. The cheapest bed costs $ 27 a night. "If Detroit were a comfortable city without problems, just like any other city in the US, we would stagnate, and then there would never have been this upbeat mood," says 29-year-old manager Taylor Kozak. "But now we have to be creative, have to live a life according to the do-it-yourself principle." The bankruptcy, which was announced a few weeks ago, said Taylor, had only accelerated this DIY movement."

Hostel Detroit was envisioned as a way to connect out-of-town visitors with local residents. It is “an educational organization that is meant to show people Detroit’s culture and assets and the real story of what’s happening here,” said founder Emily Doerr, who serves on the hostel’s board of directors. Support comes from guests who stay in the hostel’s nine bedrooms as well as the Knight and June and Cecil Mcdole Foundations. Volunteers contribute time, material or services to help make the hostel run.

"“That’s what we want to do, is allow people to make their own story of the city rather than coming and maybe affirming a belief that someone handed down to them because they don’t have the information or access,” Soucisse says.
So like many days at Hostel Detroit, Soucisse crams in a handful of guests into his sedan and gives them a tour of the city."

2012

"Corktown is Detroit's oldest neighborhood, and today it's become a diamond in the rough—proof that the D isn't all gloom and doom. There's a non-profit youth hostel called Hostel Detroit, where beds start at $18 and the volunteers go above and beyond to make guests feel at home. If that isn't your scene, there's always the MGM Grand Detroit, which toes the line between Corktown and Downtown like a wide receiver (in this case, Calvin Johnson) trying to stay in bounds. Slows Bar BQ is arguably the best restaurant in the city, and you should try that Yardbird sandwich for confirmation, and you can hit up Nancy Whiskey to drink responsibly. Vintage rules here—clothes can be found at Rachel's Place, and books at the John K. King store. The neighborhood was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and things are steadily on the up and up. It's about time you heard about something good out of Detroit, right?"

But one of the best places to find Foreigners is in a hostel. Opened recently, Hostel Detroit is a two-story house with a great view of the very iconic and very abandoned Michigan Central train station. But the station was born the same time as Ford's cars, and as we know in United States, cars won the race to move people.....It's a first-stop for many visitors and their cameras, including me..... Back at the hostel, I met Maria, a resident of Oslo, Norway, who said she came to the United States specifically to see Detroit. Maria said she didn't rent a car for the motor city when she arrived, but got a lift instead from someone she met on the plane.
"I got driven to this hostel, because I arrived in the middle of the night, by the former mayor of Detroit, Ken Cockrel," she said. "I was just sitting close to him and found out he was living quite close to the hostel. It's just [that] people are very helpful."
I asked her why on her first trip to the United States she is visiting Detroit, and not, say, New York. "New York, you can go when you're old, when you are 50 and you can afford it and it will be still the same," she said. "Detroit, I came now because of a lot of coincidences I heard [about] what was going on here.""

"This spring the opening ceremony for Hostel Detroit seemed more like a college party. While Mr. Howrani shot photos of Ms. Doerr, the hostel founder, thanking her supporters, Ms. Bielby of the Hinterlands Ensemble entertained the crowd on her trombone as part of the Detroit Party Marching Band, a makeshift musical troupe with colorful uniforms. On several picnic tables were sandwiches and treats donated by local restaurants, like the Russell Street Deli. Among the guests were officials from the office of the city’s mayor, Dave Bing, as well as the lieutenant governor."

"In most cities, the opening of a youth hostel might not be all that big a deal. But Detroit isn’t most cities, and in an era when most of the news is bad, new things, positive things — well, the locals pay attention.
A lot of it was about being in the right place at the right time. Hostel Detroit (it sounds like the title of an upcoming Eli Roth movie, but it’s really not) made its debut this spring in Corktown, Detroit’s oldest neighborhood. Once a bastion of traditional Irish-American culture, Corktown has become a place to see Detroit at its coolest."